Eternal Security for Infants: Illogical Indifference for Pastors

One of the most common heresies committed by pastors who attempt to evade responsibility for defending life is to trivialize abortion on grounds that “aborted babies go to Heaven anyway.” Pastor Rick Warren, one of America’s most outspokenly pro-life clerics, made repeated resort to this argument when I challenged him to do more to fight abortion at Saddleback Church. Steve Douglas, now head of Campus Crusade for Christ, said the same thing in precisely the same words when I pressed him to do more to stop abortion. This bizarre theory is now endemic in the Body of Christ.

When we repeat Satan’s lie that a child’s assurance of eternal life diminishes the church’s responsibility to protect his mortal life, we are doing the work of the devil. “The Son of God appeared for the purpose of undoing the work of the Devil.” 1 John 3:8.

Not all theologians agree that every deceased child goes to Heaven (Romans 9:13-15: “Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’”) The Bible doesn’t address this issue in doctrinaire terms. But there are many passages from which we can reasonably infer that aborted preborn children will spend eternity in Glory. For instance, in II Samuel 12:15-23, a Heaven-bound David says of the death of the child who resulted from his illicit relationship with Bathsheba, “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”

In Luke 12:48, Christ explained that “… the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows.” Little children are obviously among those who do “things deserving of punishment” but do “not know.” Notwithstanding the sin nature imparted by the Fall, preborn children are obviously even more innocent than toddlers. Christ’s promises make clear that children will be treated with mercy.

Scripture abounds with testimonies to God’s great love for children. Such passages offer at least circumstantial evidence of a child’s eligibility for eternal fellowship with his Father. Matthew 18:2 says that Jesus “… called a little child and had him stand among them.” In Matthew 18:10, still speaking of that child, He said, “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in Heaven always see the face of my Father in Heaven.” In Mark 10:14, we read, “When Jesus saw this [the apostles preventing children from approaching Christ] He was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.’”

The notion that God’s mercies cancel our obligations is deeply Satanic and not least when used to minimize our accountability in response to genocide. Christ warned in John 8:44 that Satan always lies and Satan always kills. He cautioned that Satan “was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth.” The truth is that God hates baby-killing and Satan loves it.

Satan tried to kill the baby Moses by inspiring Pharaoh’s attempt to annihilate every male Israelite child in Egypt (Exodus 1:15). The baby Jesus survived a similar bloodbath as Satan tried to kill Him through Herod’s command that every male child under the age of two be butchered (Matthew 2:16). Satan would kill God if he could. Since he can’t, he grieves the heart of God by provoking the slaughter of children created in God’s image. God signaled His regard for life in the womb when He chose to become man at the moment of Christ’s conception, not the moment of His birth.

But if the horror of baby-butchering were mitigated by the fact that butchered babies go straight to Heaven, why would God say of child sacrifice in Jeremiah (7:24-26, 30-31), “… they burn to death their little sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods – a deed so horrible I’ve never even thought of it …”?

In Isaiah 59:2-3, He says, “…[B]ut your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood ….” The blood of which He speaks is the blood of murdered children.

In Ezekiel 16:20-43, He says that His own people “… have enraged me …” with child sacrifice. In Psalm 106:37-42, He says that because of their child sacrifice “… Jehovah’s anger burned against His people and He abhorred them. That is why He let the heathen nations crush them.” In Jeremiah 19:3-11, God says that because of child sacrifice, “… will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended.”

I have actually had pastors tell me that child sacrifice enraged God because it involved idolatry, not because it involved baby-killing. Did they mean that baby-killing would have been okay if it weren’t a sacramental element of some pagan ritual? There can be little doubt that any worship of pagan deities would have provoked God’s wrath but not the wrath He reserved for worship which involved child sacrifice. The enemy of our souls claims the same victory whether a child is slaughtered at the altar of Artemis or Baal or the altar of selfish “choice.”

But despite the virtual certainty that an aborted baby inherits eternal life, God’s will for his mortal life has still been thwarted. God could have created man, as he did the angels, to remain with Him in Heaven. But instead, He intends for man to be born, attain the age of reason and choose whether or not to be reconciled to God and serve Him, for which choices he will be judged.

Satan, who comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10), kills a baby to destroy the good God intended for that child to eventually confer on His Kingdom. Multiply that loss by the roughly 50 million babies the World Health Organization estimates are aborted globally each year. That is 100 million babies every 24 months. A billion is a thousand million. At current rates, that is a billion babies every 20 years. Can our indifference to such unfathomable carnage please God?

Rationalizing that “babies go to Heaven anyway” could argue for abortion and even infanticide as a means of preempting any possibility that a child might reject Christ after reaching the “age of reason.” This sort of thinking calls into question the wisdom of caring about the mortal peril in which any born-again believer of any age might find himself. Immediately upon their unjust or preventable death, every believer will go “straight into the arms of Jesus” so why intervene?

Taken to its logical conclusion, this illogical assertion compels the absurd belief that we are doing Christians a favor if we actually hasten their departure, either passively or even actively! In John 16:2 Christ warns that “… in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.” That time seems to have arrived!